Supply chain design: a conceptual model and tactical simulations

摘要

In current research literature, supply chain management (SCM) is a hot topicbreaching the boundaries of many academic disciplines. SCM-related work can befound in the relevant literature for many disciplines. Supply chain management can bedefined as effectively and efficiently managing the flows (information, financial andphysical) in all stages of the supply chain to add value to end customers and gain profitfor all firms in the chain. Supply chains involve multiple partners with the common goalto satisfy customer demand at a profit.While supply chains are not new, the way academics and practitioners view theneed for and the means to manage these chains is relatively new. Very little literaturecan be found on designing supply chains from the ground up or what dimensions ofsupply chain management should be considered when designing a supply chain.Additionally, we have found that very few tools exist to help during the design phase ofa supply chain. Moreover, very few tools exist that allow for comparing supply chaindesigns.We contribute to the current literature by determining which supply chainmanagement dimensions should be considered during the design process. We employtext mining to create a supply chain design conceptual model and compare this model to existing supply chain models and reference frameworks. We continue to contribute tothe current SCM literature by applying a creative application of concepts and results inthe field of Stochastic Processes to build a custom simulator capable of comparingdifferent supply chain designs and providing insights into how the different designsaffect the supply chain?s total inventory cost. The simulator provides a mechanism fortesting when real-time demand information is more beneficial than using first-come,first-serve (FCFS) order processing when the distributional form of lead-time demand isderived from the supply chain operating characteristics instead of using the assumptionthat lead-time demand distributions are known. We find that in many instances FCFSout-performs the use of real-time information in providing the lowest total inventorycost.